RTE – Release Train Engineer Interview Q & A

Release Train Engineer (RTE), is a servant leader and the chief scrum master for the Agile Release Train (ART). Their primary responsibility is to accelerate the ART events and assist in delivering the value. RTEs must have excellent communication skills, and they are the ones who usually interact with the stakeholders as well. RTE facilitates optimizing the flow of value through the program using various mechanisms, such as the Program Kanban, Inspect & Adapt workshops, and PI planning. The Scaled Agile Framework has multiple different roles:

• A SAFe Agilist improves the adaption process of Lean Agile mindset within the organization.
• A Release Train Engineer keeps the Agile Trains of an organization on track.
• A SAFe Program Consultant is the leading agent who implements the whole SAFe framework in the organization.

Besides these roles, there are also other important SAFe roles: SAFe Scrum Master, SAFe Product Owner, SAFe Advanced Scrum Master.

SAFe Important Links

Qualities of a RTE (Release Train Engineer)

1. Agile Mindset – A great RTE not only understands the foundations of Agile and SAFe, but embraces an Agile mindset. The RTE not only teaches Agile, but embodies an Agile mindset. It is in the state of being Agile that one exudes the confidence in knowing the value that Agility provides. A great RTE will be value focused and guided by the Lean-Agile principles as outlined above in SAFe, with a concentration on Systems thinking.
2. Courageous – Like a ScrumMaster, a great RTE has the courage to say what needs to be said in a respectful and tactful way. They respect the authority and direction of management, but have the courage to deliver the truth, even if it’s not what people want to hear. The RTE must have the courage to say “no” sometimes in order to avoid over-committing the train to too much work.
3. Servant Leadership – A great RTE is above all a Servant Leader, leading the team by example, by actions as well as by words. They earn the respect of the ART, from both the leadership as well as the teams.
   • The RTE will serve the SM community as the primary escalation contact and be ready to do whatever is necessary to keep the train rolling.
   • The RTE steps up when called upon to work with the SAFe Release Management Team, Product Management Team and other representatives of Shared Services.

4. Integrity – A great RTE is a person of integrity. They hold themselves accountable to keep their word and deal fairly with everyone.
5. Facilitator – A great RTE is comfortable presenting in front of the team and management. They have an arsenal of tools and techniques to keep the participants interested and engaged.
6. Negotiator – A great RTE understands that most things are not black and white. There are many shades of grey, where matters must be negotiated to achieve an agreement that is palatable to all parties involved.
7. Communicator – A great RTE can deliver a message with tact, being sensitive to how the message is received by the team or by management.
8. Teacher – A great RTE nurtures the team’s understanding of Agile principles and practices through the use of workshops, Agile games, and presentations.
9. Mentor – A great RTE serves to guide individuals in the Train to a clearer understanding of the processes and approaches implemented by the ART.
10. Honest and Transparent – A great RTE understands the value of transparency. Bad news is not like wine – it does not get better with time. Agile does not fix problems, but it does expose them. A great RTE knows this and approaches the matter with the intention of informing the broader group and working together on a resolution.
11. Critical Thinking – A great RTE has the ability to think on their feet. They can quickly analyze a situation and organize the team around a solution. They does not have to define the solution but has the savvy to guide the conversation.
12. Lifelong learner – A great RTE understands that their learning journey is never over. They strives to build their skills through continuous learning. Learning comes from many places: formal classroom training, books, blog posts, podcasts, seminars, and other colleagues – everyone around you can teach you valuable lessons you can apply every day in a team setting.

Activities of a RTE (Release Train Engineer)

• Guide, coordinate, organize and align all the teams in the Agile Release Train.
• Participating in the Pre and Post PI Program Increment (PI) meetings to prepare the vision and the backlog for the PI.
• Conduct Planning session and aligning the PI objectives. Summarize the objectives so that they are clear and visible to all the teams in the Agile Release Train enhancing transparency.
• Communicating start and end dates of the Iterations communicated to the teams that become the part of the Agile Release Train.
• Operating within Lean-Budgets, and provide insight in economic matters to facilitate feature estimation.
• Frequently communicate with the other value stream stakeholders. The coordination with the Product Management and Product Owners ensure that the Agile Release Train adheres to the strategy that has been devised.
• Track impediments, perform risk and dependency analysis.
• Conducts Program Kanban, Inspect & Adapt workshops and PI Planning to maintain an optimum flow of value that the Agile Release Train has to deliver and improve the quality using Continuous Delivery Pipeline.
• Remove bottleneck situations by providing resources and facilitation.
• Facilitate system demos are set by the Release Train Engineer ensuring Lean-User Experience.
• Finally, as a chief scrum master, coach leaders, teams, and Scrum Masters in Lean-Agile practices and mindsets. At the end of the iteration, conducting Inspect and Adapt sessions where continuous improvement is encouraged. The status is reported to the Lean Portfolio Management.

RTE Interview Questions and Answers

Question: What are the key roles and responsibilities of a Release Train Engineer (RTE)?

The core responsibilities of the RTE are as follows:

• Manage & optimize the flow of value through mechanisms such as Program Kanban, Inspect & Adapt workshops and PI planning
• Aggregate Team PI Objectives into Program PI Objectives and publish them for visibility and transparency
• Encourage the collaboration between all the teams and Solution Architects, Engineering, and User Experience team, etc
• Work with Product Owners, Product Management and other value stream stakeholders to help ensure strategy and execution alignment
• Track impediments and help manage risks and dependencies
• As a chief scrum master, coach leaders, teams, and Scrum Masters in Lean-Agile practices and mindsets

Question: How a Release Train Engineer (RTE) facilitates value stream processes and execution, escalates impediments, manages risk, and helps ensure value delivery and continuous improvement?

Answer: As a Release Train Engineer (RTE), the role involves servant leadership and coaching for the Agile Release Train (ART). RTE facilitates value stream processes and execution, escalates impediments, manages risk, and helps ensure value delivery and continuous improvement. The key responsibilities include – People, Program Increment, ART Success Indicators, Improvement Roadmap, and Coaching & Education.

The Release Train Engineer is the Chief Scrum Master who facilitates program-level processes and program execution, escalates impediments, manages risk, and helps drive program-level continuous improvement. RTEs are responsible for facilitating program events such as Release Planning, the Inspect & Adapt Workshops, and the Scrum of Scrums. During retrospective sessions, the Release Train Engineer reports to the Product Owner. Usually, the RTE reports to the Agile Program Management office which in SAFe, is considered a part of the Lean Portfolio Management (LPM). Many also participate in the Lean-Agile transformation, coaching leaders, teams, and Scrum Masters in the new processes and mindsets. They help configure SAFe to the organization’s needs, standardizing and documenting practices. The RTE performs a lot of activities but there are few which actually helps the teams at all levels such as – assisting with economic decision-making by facilitating feature and capability estimation by teams and the roll-up to Epics, wherever necessary, Improving the flow of value through value streams using the Continuous Delivery Pipeline and DevOps, etc.

Question: Can you describe the four-tier hierarchy of artifacts that describe functional system behavior?

SAFe defines an artifact hierarchy of  Epic, Capability, Feature, and Story.

• Stories are the primary artifacts, where each story provides a small, independent behavior that can be implemented incrementally and that provides some value to the user
• Feature is a service provided by the system that addresses stakeholders requirements. Each feature has two core concepts –  a benefit hypothesis and acceptance criteria.
• Capabilities are similar to features, however, they describe higher-level solution behaviors and often take multiple ARTs to implement.
• Epics are defined at Portfolio Level and they are containers for significant initiatives that help guide value streams toward the larger aim of the portfolio. They are large and typically crosscutting, crossing multiple Value Streams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs).

Question: What is the difference between a Capability and a Feature?

A feature is a service provided by the system that addresses stakeholders’ requirements. Each feature has two core concepts –  a benefit hypothesis and acceptance criteria. It is sized as necessary and made ready to be delivered by a single Agile Release Train (ART) in a Program Increment (PI).

Capabilities are similar to features, however, they describe higher-level solution behaviors and often take multiple ARTs to implement. They are sized and broken down into multiple features to aid their implementation in a single PI.

Question: What do you know about the Value Stream Level of SAFe?

Value stream layer was introduced between the ART and Portfolio layers as part of SAFe 4.0. It is intended for builders of large and complex solutions, that typically require multiple ARTs as well as the contribution of Suppliers. Value Stream Level is optional and the primary purpose of this level is to apply Lean-Agile approaches to define, build, and deploy large, mission-critical solutions. Building such solutions requires additional constructs, artifacts, and coordination. This level contains

• An Economic Framework which provides financial boundaries for Value Stream decision-making
• A Solution Intent as a repository to keep track of intended and actual solution behavior
• A Solution Context, which describes the way the solution fits in the deployment environment
• Capabilities that describe the larger behaviors of the solution

Question: Why is Value Stream Mapping important?

Answer: Value stream mapping is a technique used to document, analyze and improve the flow of information or materials required to produce a product or service for a customer. It is a fundamental tool to identify waste, reduce process cycle times, and implement process improvement. A value stream map is usually formed as a one-page flow chart portraying the current production track or design path of a product from the customer’s request to delivery.  An important objective of value stream mapping is to identify processes that do not provide value so they can be improved. In lean production, value can be believed to as something the customer is prepared to pay for. Processes that do not deliver value are called waste.  Value stream maps document the current state of the value stream as well as the future state of the value stream and define any gaps between the two. 

Value stream mapping is often used to ascertain processes that could be streamlined and areas of waste that could be eradicated in keeping with Toyota’s kaizen philosophy. The philosophy, which highlights continuous improvement, has been adopted by many other industries outside manufacturing including healthcare and software development.

Critical benefits are

• Visualize and bound your process
• Optimize the way you deliver value to your customers
• Identify the process steps with the greatest significance

Question: What is an Agile Release Train (ART)?

Answer: An Agile Release Train (ART) is a long-lived, self-organizing team of Agile Teams., which, along with other stakeholders, incrementally plans, develops, and delivers a continuous flow of incremental releases of value in a Value Stream.

Question: What is the relationship between Value Stream and Agile Release Train (ART)?

Answer:

Value Stream	Agile Release Train (ART)
A Value Stream is a long-lived series of steps that provide a continuous flow of value to the customer. A Value Stream can have many ARTs within it.	An Agile Release Train is a long-lived, self-organizing team of Agile Teams that delivers a continuous flow of incremental releases of value in a Value Stream.

Question: How is the Solution Train different from Agile Release Train?

Answer: The Solution Train is the organizational construct that is used to build very large and complex solutions that require the coordination of multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs), as well as support from the contributors of Suppliers. It aligns all these ARTs with a shared mission using the solution vision, backlogs and roadmap, and an aligned program increment.

The solution train provides additional roles, events, and artifacts needed to coordinate the building of some of the world’s largest and most important systems and solutions. The failure of such solutions, or even a subsystem, has unacceptable economic and societal consequences.

Question: What is meant by tipping point?

Answer: An enterprise reaches its tipping point when the dominant organizational motive is to achieve change rather than resist it. The status quo becomes so unacceptable that making a change is the only way forward. 

Question: How does decentralized decision-making fit into the SAFe model?

Answer: Organizations have to keep up with rapid change, disruptive technologies, and ever-changing market demands. In SAFe Stakeholders are continuously involved in the decision-making process. The primary intention behind decentralized decision-making is to shorten the lead time for decisions so that value can be delivered within the sustainably shortest lead time. The feedback process must be faster for the issues that were delayed due to waiting for specific higher authority will impact the organization and in this situation, decentralized decision-making is critical to the success of the organization. It helps in reducing delays, improves product development flows, and enables faster feedback.

Please note the decisions which have a big impact & are beyond the scope of certain teams will need a decision from higher authority, but generally, time-critical decisions are decentralized.

Question: How does SAFe support alignment & outcomes out of it?

Answer: Alignment is one of the core values in SAFe which helps organizations in keeping pace with the rapid changes, disruptive technologies, and ever-changing market demands. SAFe supports alignment by

• SAFe starts with strategy and investment decisions at the Portfolio, is reflected in Strategic Themes and the Portfolio Backlog. In turn, this informs the Vision, Roadmap, and backlogs at all level of SAFe.
• Continuous Exploration gathers the inputs and perspectives from a diverse group of stakeholders and information sources to ensure that the items in the backlogs contain economically prioritized and refined work ready for teams to implement. All work is visible, debated, resolved and transparent.
• Supported by clear lines of content authority, starting with the portfolio and then resting primarily with the Product and Solution Management roles, and extending to the Product Owner role.
• PI Objectives and Iteration Goals are used to communicate expectations and commitments.
• Cadence and synchronization are applied to ensure that things stay in alignment, or that they drift only within reasonable economic and time boundaries.
• Stakeholders are continuously involved in decision making process.
• Architectures and user feedback keeps solution technically robust

Question: What is Architectural Runway and why is it important in SAFe? 

Answer: Architecture runway consists of the existing code, components, and technical infrastructure necessary to support the implementation of prioritized, near-term features, without excessive redesign & delay. 

Agile development yields the practice of Emergent design i.e. the best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-managing teams. It helps in

• Reducing excessive redesign & delays that slow down velocity.
• increasing collaboration & synchronization among teams.
• Integrating Systems that are complex, difficult to integrate, validate & maintain.

Question: SAFe is based on Lean Product Development. What is the goal of Lean thinking?

The goal of Lean is to deliver maximum customer value while minimizing waste and providing the highest possible value to the customer and society as a whole. To accomplish this:

• Lean thinking optimizes the flow of products and services
• Lean-Agile principles provide a better understanding of the system development process
• It incorporates new tools and techniques that leaders and teams can use to deliver the best results
• Emphasizes more on respecting people and culture

Question: What is the Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration in SAFe?

An important aspect of SAFe is continuous improvement. which is achieved through periodic Innovation and Planning sprints. IP iteration provides a regular, cadence-based opportunity for teams to work on activities that are difficult to fit into a continuous, incremental value delivery pattern. These may include:

• Time for innovation and exploring beyond the iterations dedicated to the delivery
• Working on technical infrastructure, tooling, and other impediments
• Education and awareness to support continuous learning and improvement